Rugrats: The Last Token

BOOM! Studios

Writer: Pranas T. Naujokaitis

Artist: Maurizia Rubino

Rugrats. One of the definitive cartoons of the ’90s and arguably Nickelodeon’s best show. So many people grew up with Tommy, Chuckie and the gang and even now there’s a lot of love for this series. Enough love that BOOM! Studios has decided to release an original graphic novel continuing the babies’ adventures. Let’s see how it holds up to the show.

The Last Token sees our lovable band of babies being taken to an arcade by Stu and Drew pickles. There they join Suzie and Angelica in exploring the arcade and learning about how you can use tokens to play games, win tickets and trade the tickets for prizes. Naturally, the arcade runs out of tokens, its patrons go crazy and the rugrats are left with the only remaining token. This leads to a lord of the rings-style adventure to cross the game room and use the token on a volcano-themed game machine. In the meantime, their dads get up to some hijinks of their own with the store’s animatronics.

The writing on The Last Token is pretty decent. I think Naujokaitis has a good idea of the characters since most of them feel like they did in the show. The personalities are there, you get the catchphrases and the relationships between characters are fairly accurate. That being said there are some occasions where the fact that this is an adult writing toddlers stands out. It’s nowhere near as bad as something like Marvel’s Power pack in the ’80s but the “baby” dialogue can sometimes feel unnatural.

The art by Rubino is pretty great throughout the book. I was a bit uncertain after seeing some of her prior work but it fits. It’s not quite the same as the classic show but it’s close enough that you won’t feel too much disconnect. One thing that stood out was how simplistic the backgrounds of her panels were. They’re mostly just the one colour and it really highlights the characters and their dialogue. It also reminded me of a lot of classic 60’s superhero comics which helped bring the nostalgic feel for me.

The only thing I found questionable about this graphic novel was the subject it’s parodying. The lord of the rings isn’t what I would call a notable subject in 2019. The last film adaptation of the trilogy came out 16 years ago. The last film adaptation of “The Hobbit” came out 5 years ago and it was nowhere near as big as the original trilogy. Due to this, I feel The Last Token is a bit out of place in 2019. If this was released in the 2000s or even at the start of this decade then it’d feel far less dated. Maybe that’s what the creators were going for though. Rugrats is 30 years old now. Given that this book is mostly looking to profit from nostalgia it’d make sense to incorporate a big film series that the 90’s Rugrats fans would’ve also grown up with. To some eyes that’ll make this book a great little blast from the past.

Rugrats: The Last Token is a good read if you’re a fan of the original show. It’ll sate the craving for nostalgia. It’s probably not going to be as good for the kids of today but that’s purely due to the format. At over a hundred pages this book is on the long side given the content. That might make it a bit too challenging for the younger age groups Rugrats tends to target. Overall though, The Last Token is well worth getting.